


Before and After (Puerto Rico)

by longnoideatime



Category: Wizards of Waverly Place
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 13:23:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4437035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longnoideatime/pseuds/longnoideatime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's mostly about how I think things changed after the movie, and a possible reason as to why. (Aside from the writers trying to make the incest subtext less.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before and After (Puerto Rico)

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, critiques, feedback, kudos, quips, witticisms, etc appreciated.

Something happened in Puerto Rico. She and Justin had been so close, but then  _it_ happened, and they never spoke of Puerto Rico, or of it, and they fell back into such normal patterns. Except he fought Mason for her, and was more careful with his hugs. He didn't come out onto the terrace with her when the stars were out and she was staring up at them; he forced her into being a cheerleader, with a short short skirt, and let the whole school hate her when she won the award he wanted. And made a shitty video when she'd won the award he wanted.

Most of the time it seemed like they were further away than they'd been before the trip, but maybe that was because he wasn't in wizard lessons with her anymore, or because she'd won the family powers once, or because eventually they weren't even in school together anymore. She wanted him back, or she thought she did, but then sometimes he would slip and say things like, "We're not normal people," while she was leaning her head against his shoulder, and she couldn't decide if she wanted what they'd had before Puerto Rico back if it meant she lost the moments where he slipped, and the after effects of what they'd done made them closer and more dangerous. She wondered if he could feel her heart beating too loudly in her chest.

"You're everything I want," she'd said, and if it had shocked her and maybe even him when the words "to be" followed, she couldn't have said why. Or rather she wouldn't have, because Alex was too smart to not know why those two words were both necessary and not completely honest. But he was both everything, just everything, and everything she almost wasn't selfish enough to want, and he was the reason it was a lie when she so arrogantly claimed she got everything she wanted. He was why she was weak with Mason, and cold like untouchable stone as the stakes began to raise and there began to be more close calls and he stopped telling her he loved her, and he stopped looking at her like another on the long list of things he wanted that she made it impossible for him to have, even when the world looked like it was ending around them. He didn't come back from darkness for her, but for Rosie.

So she would've taken it back, if she could've, because what they'd had before hadn't hurt so much. Because he was Justin, and he was too stubborn, and lately too almost-cruel to step back behind the line with her and be close, and be her brother, without her using magic on him after them sneaking beneath the velvet ropes in a world she'd wished away once, and a million times since.

 


End file.
